The Borrowers...

(Or: "There's something about Mary"...)

“Never a lender nor borrower be” goes the old saying, to paraphrase The Bard….but where would that leave the great British public library service, eh?...No, no dear readers – lending and borrowing, particularly during these straitened times, might very well become a more common currency…

I was pondering this whilst watching the excellent BBC production of The Borrowers this yuletide past (did anyone else see it?...what did you think?)
Wasn’t it splendid!






I seem to recall reading the book as a young blognipper, but – confess – I know little about its author, one Mary Norton (1903 – 1992)…


Hence, I have mobilised my research team to investigate, and here are their findings, condensed into an exquisitely compact and thimble-sized FIVE FACTS:


1) Mary Norton devised the idea of the tiny Borrowers, as she was immensely short-sighted a child: she remembered peering close up into grass, tree roots, beneath the furniture, cracks in the floorboards and such like…it made her wonder what life would be like for tiny little creatures, and how they’d cope with such obstacles in their way, and that’s how the idea began…


2) Mary seems to have been universally liked and admired: “She was as thin as a wasp, and very pale and quiet and gentle” wrote one contemporary, while her publisher said “there were few authors quite so charming and distinguished as Mary, so vital, and with such a marvellous sense of humour”.


3) During the war, Mary’s husband served in the Royal Navy, and the family were based in New York – it was here that she published her first children’s books `The Magic Bed-Knob` and then `Bonfires and Broomsticks` - back in England, her publishers (wisely) revised the titles into one volume: ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’!


4) Despite her wealth and social standing, Mary had an acute social conscience, a deep sympathy for the underdog, and a growing awareness of green issues – it’s been suggested that The Borrowers actually represented the real “little people” of post-war Britain suffering economic and social hardships, poverty, rationing, unemployment and hunger: Arrietty is the forerunner of many an anguished teenager, and the destruction of the Borrowers’ environment represents ecological and civic decline…All very modern!


5) Despite this, Mary Norton remained an optimistic and cheerful campaigner for children, and the value of reading, with a refreshingly anarchic tinge…"Children nowadays are encouraged to invent, but still in ways devised by adults: `Clear up that mess!’ has destroyed many a secret world…chaos and destruction worries grown-ups far more than it does children…if imagination and the raw materials are there to hand, they simply build again”.






Mary Norton – I like the cut of your jib, and I salute you!






Now, where was I? And where did I leave my thimble?...Ah, yes! – I remember…


"Borrowing” – sorry, Shakespeare old chap, but the idea of borrowing and lending has never been so important, in so many ways…WHOOPS!




And don’t forget, dear readers and borrowers; YOUR LIBRARY NEEDS YOU!


MAKE DO AND MEND!!


YOU’VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD!!!






TTFN